


To Die By Your Side

by StarMaamMke



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, Forest Sex, Mostly Pwp, NSFW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:56:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8840122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarMaamMke/pseuds/StarMaamMke
Summary: A director's cut of a response to an "I Love You" prompt list on my tumblr. Jim and Joyce find solace in a dangerous time. Things were bad. No good. Utterly and completely fubar, so why not have a laugh? The world was ending, but Joyce was giving Jim that smile that had completely fucked him sideways the first time he saw it, way back in Hawkins Middle School; shy and slow, nervously biting at her lower lip, a glimmer of promise in her rich brown eyes. Jim was keenly aware how inappropriate it was to want her in that moment, but that awareness did nothing to change the fact that he was harder than college calculus.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this story was a drabble I posted on my @StarMaamMke tumblr in response to a Ways to Say I Love you prompt list. Give me a follow if you want to read a bunch of drabbles set in post-apocalyptic Hawkins!
> 
> Work was not seen by editor. All mistakes are mine.

James Franklin Hopper was going to die, and this was how it was going to happen: on his back with some interdimensional flower beast drooling over him, preparing to use his carcass to incubate slugs. It had been a good ride… no - scratch that -  it had actually been a dismal ride with a few scant miles of good road in the beginning, middle and end. 

 

It was straddling him, bending low towards his face, so close that he gagged on the stench coming from its hot breath. It reminded him of the way his grandmother’s hospital room had smelled the day she died; like heaps and heaps of shriveled lilacs that he had collected for her during her long illness, cloying humidity, disinfectant, and the acute fear of being left alone in the room with her when it happened. He wondered if the smell was different for everyone. What did that Holland girl smell?

 

He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up his daughter’s face; blonde and grinning and bursting with life. He wanted her face to be the one he saw before he went, not this viscous, pulsating monstrosity that was about to tear him from groin to sternum. He wanted to hear her laugh, sweet, soft and musical - not the cruel, inhuman, click and rattle that was assaulting his ears. He wanted his senses to be flooded with good things; Sarah, Diane, his mother, his father…

 

Joyce. God he hoped she wasn’t going to suffer the same fate. It had gotten him so quickly. They had been running from it in the woods, and had gotten separated. He had run towards her scream, not knowing how he would take it down, but feeling as though he could punch a hole in the moon if it meant Joyce would be safe. Where was - 

 

A audible ‘swoosh’ sound filled the air and he felt something heavy hit him in the chest before it bounced off and rolled to his side. He opened his eyes in time to see that the thing had been the creature’s head. The body buckled and collapsed on top of him, pinning him firmly to the soggy ground. 

 

“Jim! Oh my god.” It was Joyce. Thank the fucking saints and all the angels, she was alive. She was… stronger than she looked. He grunted and pushed upwards to help her push the creature off of his chest. 

 

“Am I ever glad to see you!” He took her proffered hand, rising to his feet and trying to ignore the shaking in his legs. 

 

“I saw it got you and I was so s-scared. I j-just -  I had the ax and I didn’t know if I- I... did I cut you?” Joyce was babbling and explaining herself through choking sobs. Her hands went up to cup his face, trying to assess for damage.  He gazed down at her with wide, adoring eyes. It was like seeing God for the first time. There had to be words for a moment like this. She was a hero, a mythic warrior, a Valkyrie - she deserved a song, an epic poem, something…

 

“I fucking love you so much.”

 

Joyce reeled back at Jim’s sudden declaration and give a harsh bark of laughter that turned into a fit of hysterical giggles. She raised a hand to cover her mouth, a futile attempt to muffle the onslaught; her thin shoulders shook with mirth. It was only slightly preferable to the sobbing she was doing moments earlier. “I’d love to know what you think is so funny, Joyce.”

 

Joyce shook her head and moved her hand to speak: “When we were kids you told me you’d see me in Hell before you’d ever say you loved me again.” She waved a hand, Barker’s Beauties style, towards the felled beast at their feet. “It’s colder than Pastor Charles said it would be, isn’t it?” 

 

“Fuck, when you put it that way.” Jim shook his head and gave a hoarse, defeated laugh that made the bruises on his side hurt. 

 

Things were bad. No good. Utterly and completely fubar, so why not have a laugh? The world was ending, but Joyce was giving Jim that smile that had completely fucked him sideways the first time he saw it, way back in Hawkins Middle School; shy and slow, nervously biting at her lower lip, a glimmer of promise in her rich brown eyes. Jim was keenly aware how inappropriate it was to want her in that moment, but that awareness did nothing to change the fact that he was harder than college calculus. 

 

“We should go back and check on the others. It’s almost too dark to see out here and I don’t want to get lost,” Joyce remarked in a small voice. Her eyes were fixed on the sodden ground, and he could make out a hint of a blush on her pale, dirt-smudged cheeks. Jim realized that he had been staring intently at her, and she had caught on to the fact. His terrible poker face had betrayed him once more. 

 

“You’re right,” was his hoarse reply. He watched her pick up the ax, and was once again struck by the power that must have been bursting from her tiny, seemingly fragile frame when she had used the thing to save him from certain death. The strength in those delicate ivory hands with their finely tapered fingers - the hands of a woman who would kill for those in her care, who would do it crying out in a pitch almost more enticing than the one she used when she…

 

Jim was in front of her quite suddenly. He took her free hand and ground out: “Put down the ax.” Confusion flashed across her features. “My girlfriend just saved my life in the most bad-ass way possible, and my cock is aching clear to my shoulders over it. Let me at least give her a kiss to show my gratitude.” 

 

The ax fell to from her hand with a dull ‘thud’ and rustle to the leaf-blanketed ground, and he pulled her away from the scene of the crime - away from the sight of the inky, steaming carcass. He could keep an erection through an old testament sermon, but he didn’t want her to have to kiss him with that thing rotting in her peripherals. He kept wiping his face with his sleeve, a last minute attempt to scrub it free of Demogorgon remnants. Before everything went pear-shaped, the labs had been able to determine that the blood from those creatures was not toxic. It was still disgusting.

 

Once they were in the clear - several yards away where Jim could still keep an eye on Joyce’s discarded weapon - he lifted his hands to cup her face and bent low to brush his lips against hers. It was innocent and fleeting, barely a ghost of contact that required supreme restraint, but he wanted to gauge her interest. Not everyone had a surge of post battle horniness, and he didn’t want to scare her with how badly he needed her. When he pulled away, she scoffed, threw her arms about his neck and pulled herself against him, wrapping her strong legs about his waist. “Jesus Christ, Hop. I just decapitated a monster for you; could you at least give me a little tongue?” she inquired before bringing her lips crashing down against his. 

 

Jim immediately obliged her, delving into her soft mouth with a greedy tongue and nipping teeth; licking into the dirt, the blood and the sweetness of her triumph. One large hand moved to cup and squeeze her ass while the other slid under her blouse to tease at the smooth skin of her back. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He gave a little ‘hum’ of delight against her mouth as he recalled her reasoning: If the world was ending, she didn’t need them anymore. God, she was remarkable. 

 

The whimper Joyce gave when Jim’s lips found the side of her neck told him that a few stolen kisses in the woods was not going to suffice. He whispered his intentions into her ear, and gave a mental cheer when he felt her shudder and nod against his shoulder in response. He set her down and stepped back to watch as she began to strip. There was nothing deliberate or slow about the way she fumbled at her buttons with shaking fingers. She was in a heightened, graceless state of want, and it affected him more than any coy striptease. This pillar of strength, this warrior goddess wanted him - a mere mortal - with an undisguised lust that trembled through her body and touched her cheeks with crimson. “Are you just going to stand there staring?” Joyce asked with a glare. She crossed her arms over her breasts, and looked at him expectantly. She was completely naked, save for a pair of white panties, and shivering as she stood on top of her discarded clothing. 

 

“Uhhh…” 

 

“Take off your pants, Hop.”

 

Her wish was one hundred and fifty percent his command. Jim’s coat and flannel were the first to go, joining her clothing on the ground to form a makeshift bed. As thrilling as the idea of shoving her up against an obliging tree and fucking her senseless seemed in theory, it probably wasn’t worth the cuts and splinters. They knelt together on their blanket of flannel, wool and denim, and resumed the task of exploring each other’s mouths. 

 

“Pants,” she repeated as he pulled her onto his lap, desperate to get as close to her as he possibly could. Joyce rubbed the crux of her desire against his denim clad thigh, and he could feel a damp heat radiate through the fabric, as he kissed her mouth, throat and breasts. She was soaked and he wanted nothing more than to taste her, feast on her until she screamed his name, but the light in the sky was growing dim. If they lingered they would either be discovered by her boys or by another one of those things. Jim wasn’t sure which thought was the more unpleasant. No time for preamble, if he was going to slip inside of her and forget the world, it had to be now. 

 

Jim maneuvered her so that she was lying her back, panting through swollen lips, and shivering slightly. He unbuckled his jeans with trembling hands, pushed the material down past his waist and thighs, shuddering out a relieved sigh when the night air hit his swollen cock. He groaned when Joyce’s hand came up to grasp it, stroking with the hint of a tug. Message received. He covered her body with his and shifted his weight to his elbows as not to crush her. Joyce’s legs wrapped about his waist, and he slid inside of her in one swift motion that made them both gasp. 

 

They moved together, inelegant and frantic. Jim gasped as Joyce’s nails bit into his back and her teeth bit into his shoulder. If he lived to be one hundred, he would never tire of the way she hurt him to let him know she was pleased. Never prefer another sort of music to the increasingly incoherent mantra of his name on her lips. In this ravaged town, this uncertain new world order, there was no solace for his soul other than the kind he found at the altar of Joyce Byers. He covered her frantic cries with his mouth, his thrusts picking up speed and losing rhyme or reason as he felt himself following her over the edge. 

  
Jim repeated the sentiment from earlier as he spilled inside of Joyce, and thought he heard her echo it, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered to him was the sight of her, pink-cheeked and smug - a sure sign that he had been able to convey his gratitude in some small way. Though, he supposed, a quickie in the forest was a shabby repayment in terms of life debts. The distant, otherworldly shrieks from deep in the woods told him that there would be other opportunities in the near future.


End file.
